


Not With a Whimper but a Bang

by ElisabethMonroe



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gun Control, Gun Violence, M/M, protest, rally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:47:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1799320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElisabethMonroe/pseuds/ElisabethMonroe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which:<br/>The Les Amis run a protest/rally/information session on gun control, gun violence, and school shootings</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on lovely fan art that is lost in my Tumblr. If anyone can find it, feel free to tell me so I can link it. It's of Grantaire sitting outside in what appears to be rain wearing Enjolras' coat and looking down. It's the background on my phone but I can't find it on my computer. I tried to Google it but all I found were really cute Cosplays and other fanart. (What a hardship, right?)
> 
> This fic deals with gun control, so if that's something you're no bueno with, I suggest not reading this. If you find any wrong statistics, tell me. I got my information off of Wikipedia so it may not be right, or I may have just miscounted.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos welcome. Please feel free to tell me if you see grammatical errors or tense changes as well!

“Every day your children are dying!” Enjolras proclaimed to the hefty crowd that had shown up to hear him speak. “We are six months into the new year and there have been thirty one school shootings. Nothing is happening because the people don’t want it to happen. The majority is silent. If we speak up, they can’t ignore us!”

Combeferre stood by Enjolras on the wall he was speaking from and Courfeyrac was further down on a lower section, speaking to individuals. Jehan, Marius, Joly, and Eponine were all in the crowd distributing copies of speeches and infographics and petitions. Grantaire, Feuilly, Bossuet, and Bahorel were standing as guards around Enjolras because they realized quite quickly how violent gun control protests could get.

“Speak up! Let them know that what we want isn’t annihilation of guns. We want a stricter enforcement on them. We want to ensure a tougher screening of gun owners. We want weapons of war to stay in trained hands.” God, Grantaire could listen to Enjolras speak all day. He glanced up at the other and was struck yet again by how god like the man was, especially from this angle. His eyes were ablaze, cheeks reddened, sun shining through his hair and outlining his perfect body. The sleeves of his red jacket were pushed up to his elbows and Grantaire could tell he’d be taking it off as soon as he had time to move his pin to his shirt.

“We are students! We see the violence going home. Some of us live in the midst of gangs and drug dealers our own age!” Grantaire looked up to catch Eponine’s eye because Enjolras could only be talking about their half of the group. “We have been threatened at meetings such as these by guns shoved in our faces. We watch the news, we read the paper, we know that any day may be our last, that any wrong move, any rejection may lead to our death.

“The world says it wants no more war. Our president is withdrawing our troops. But the war has moved! Into our schools, into our dorms, into student apartments! The lack of gun control doesn’t only affect our school hallways, it affects our whole life. Toddlers are shooting their siblings on accident, men are shooting their wives, not knowing that the gun they grabbed was loaded, unarmed teenagers are being gunned down, fictional villains are being brought to life to shoot movie theaters and why? Why does any of this heart ache have to happen?!

“The short answer is that pain will always happen. Accidents will always happen. Bad people and good people alike will always do bad things but not at the rate that they’re occurring now. Fight for gun control! Speak up for the lives lost! Demand change!”

“Boy, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” a weathered voice challenged. Bahorel and Grantaire’s heads snapped up, looking for the culprit automatically.

“I don’t know the pain of losing a loved one because someone had a gun and a bad intention?” Enjolras demanded. Combeferre quickly cross to him and put a hand on his shoulder and elbow, ready to pull him away. “I don’t know that nineteen students have died since January and another thirty eight injured? I don’t know that, since Sandy Hook, there have been seventy four school shootings and fifteen of them were acted out by adults? I don’t know that a man shot seven people and injured thirteen driving down the road because he was lonely?”

Grantaire backed up to the wall, angling himself so he’d be able to jump up with Enjolras or pull the other down to him. “You don’t know what it’s like to need to defend yourself! You don’t know what it’s like to have to defend your rights against a government who wants to take them all away. You don’t know what it’s like to be a stifled minority who just wants their freedom.”

Enjolras, ever the professional, did not scoff at this. Grantaire, Feuilly, and Bahorel did, but not Enjolras. “Old man, you don’t know much about us, do you?” Bahorel demanded in that loud, booming voice of his that commanded attention and set everyone else silent. “It is illegal to be us in eighty one countries. Thirty three states in the ‘freest’ of nations won’t let us marry our significant other. Our views are ignored, our prices of education increased, and our generation slandered every day because we dare to be young. The technology that we use to improve our life and the nation and the world is mocked and ridiculed. Our nights are spent in pairs to avoid being kidnapped, beaten, raped, and/or murdered. We are left under the oppressive and killing force of your generation and we’re expected to deal with it with a smile and a note that we shouldn’t complain. We are not trusted to be adults but we’re expected to act like them. Our political opinions are ignored and undermined but then we’re criticized that we’re the generation that’s going to take over and we have no idea what we’re doing. We are the nation that has to deal with the government lying to us about how many of our friends are dying by machines that malfunction overseas. We are the students that are ignored day after day and we are done with people like you.”

It was Bahorel who’d said it, Feuilly who agreed, Enjolras who stayed silent. It was Grantaire who reached up to squeeze Enjolras’ hand lightly and Enjolras who squeezed back before letting go. Enjolras had done nothing wrong today. But, it was Enjolras who was suddenly falling forward into a screaming, gasping, crying, shifting, moving, running crowd. It was Enjolras who landed in Grantaire’s arms hard. It was Enjolras who had blood pumping out of his chest. It was Enjolras who was staring up at his boyfriend with tears in his eyes. It was Enjolras whose hand was being soaked in his own blood.

Grantaire hadn’t even heard the shot. Bahorel jumped into action, tackling the man, hitting his wrist on the ground until he let go of the hand gun, punching him in the face until he went slack too soon. Grantaire was vaguely aware of the tears streaming down his face. He knew he was begging Enjolras to be okay and to just hold on. His fingers were tight in that red jacket and he was rocking. Combeferre and Joly were both by him, Combeferre supporting Enjolras’ head in his lap where he kneeled and Joly right in front of Grantaire, trying to dress the wound as much as he could, halfway straddling the blond.

“Don’t go in to shock, Enjolras,” Combeferre demanded, brushing his hair out of his face. Enjolras coughed out a laugh, blood coming up with the air. “I don’t…I don’t think…I have time too.”

Grantaire let out a broken, awful, heart shattering sob that was probably more like a cry of anguish. “Shh, darling, shh,” Enjolras soothed softly, reaching over to run his hand down Grantaire’s chest in a far too familiar way. “You did…what you said…you would.” Enjolras’ breaths were stuttering, uneven. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

“I love you too, baby. My Apollo. You can’t leave me. You can’t leave me in the dark,” Grantaire begged, watching his tears fall onto Enjolras’ chest. “There’s so much we haven’t done yet. There’s so much we need to do. I was going to take you…I was going to take you to Paris. We were going to tour France. I was going to marry you. You can’t leave. You can’t leave. You can’t leave,” he begged over and over.

Enjolras offered a small smile and Grantaire tried to focus on his lips rather than the blood that stood out starkly to his skin. Combeferre picked him up slowly and pulled the jacket off of his body. Joly quickly cut his shirt away from his body and looked at the wound, a whimper escaping his mouth. He looked up to Combeferre who looked to him. They shared a conversation and decision in that limited, noiseless space that neither wanted to be confirmed of.

The rest of the Amis had gathered around in a circle, keeping their distance except for Courfeyrac who stumbled forward and appeared to be crying just slightly less than Grantaire. “He’s going to be alright, right?” the curly haired man asked with a trembling chin. Combeferre put a hand on Courfeyrac’s forearm and the man fell into his best friend, sobbing against his chest. Combeferre held him tightly and kissed his hair, whispering nothings against his head because he knew that there was not a thing he could say that would make this better.

“Stay strong…for me, darling,” Enjolras murmured, raising his hand to trail down Grantaire’s face though it was obvious it caused him massive amounts of pain. “Stay clean. Stay sober. Stay beautiful, love. For me.”

Grantaire nodded, not sure how he was going to manage to do that. “Okay, baby. I’ll do anything for you. I’ll do anything. Just stay with me. Please, stay.”

Enjolras nodded as if he could actually do that and dropped his hand to Grantaire’s, squeezing his fingers and closing his eyes now. “Not with a whimper, but a bang,” he breathed.

“No other way for my baby,” Grantaire forced, knowing how much Enjolras had always despised the proper line. He wanted to go down fighting. And he had.

The ambulance pulled up as Enjolras curled into Grantaire’s arms and went slack. It took the paramedics five minutes to separate Grantaire from the body. Once they had, the brunet scrambled back on his hands and feet and butt until he found the jacket. He wrapped it around his arms and buried his face in it as he screamed and cried and rocked and begged to wake up, for Enjolras to wake up, for all of this to not have happened, to be fixed.

He eventually wrapped the jacket around his shoulders, not putting his arms into the sleeves, and sat, staring at the ground.

An hour later and the ambulance still hadn’t left. Enjolras’ body was still right there. The police had been through their questioning, had the man deported to the police station. Even Javert showed up to see what the fuss was about, not able to believe that the boys were the victims here without seeing it. He came up to Grantaire and kicked his foot.

“That coat is evidence if he was wearing it when he was shot,” the police man growled gruffly, nodding to the security blanket that Grantaire was wrapped in.

“He wasn’t. I was,” Grantaire muttered. He didn’t even try to make it convincing. There were pictures, a video that would no doubt be used in court to put that mother fucking piece of shit away forever. Grantaire wasn’t sure he wanted that. He wanted to be the one to kill him, to be the one who held his neck until he stopped breathing, to hit him until he stopped moving, to shoot him, stab him, to take what he’d taken, to get even, to let him know what it felt like.

Combeferre looked up from where he was consoling Jehan and Courfeyrac simultaneously. Seeing Javert by Grantaire, he sighed and walked over. “Officer, is there a problem?” he asked calmly, as if there weren’t tear tracks down his face.

“I need the jacket for evidence. It was on the body.”

“Sir,” he tried again, gently. “Leave him be. The bullet didn’t exit and no blood landed on the jacket He’s had a long, emotional day and that’s all that’s holding him together.. Let him have the jacket.”


	2. Chapter 2

It was midnight before the officers let them go. Bahorel was the one who went over to Grantaire and wrapped an arm around him. “You need to go home.”

“I can’t. I can’t. I can’t go to an empty apartment,” Grantaire whimpered, leaning against the other’s side.

“Come back with Feuilly and me then,” Bahorel offered. “You shouldn’t be on your own anyway. Go with Joly and `Set. Ferre and Courf. Anyone. Just don’t go alone.” He held onto Grantaire tighter as the man began to shake uncontrollably.

Down a ways, Combeferre was holding Courfeyrac in his lap, petting his hair and back and crying with his boyfriend. “Why him, Ferre?” Courfeyrac sobbed, clutching onto Combeferre’s shirt. “We’re good people. We don’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve that. He was doing the right thing.”

“Shhh, love,” Combeferre breathed, pressing his face into the other’s soft curls. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. We can’t control what happens around us. Bad things happen to good people. Imagine how thrilled he’d be that this is a new argument he could use.”

“But he’s not going to, Ferre! He’s dead! He’s gone and he’s not coming back and we lost him!” Courfeyrac nearly shouted. Combeferre quickly placed a hand over his mouth and continued to soothe the other’s hair.

“Is anyone with Jehan? Someone needs to be with Jehan,” Grantaire muttered, standing up suddenly. Bahorel let his arm fall away and watched the dark haired cynic stumble from where he was, wiping his face and leaving in search of Jehan. Bahorel let him go, knowing he’d feel somewhat better if he thought he was doing a lick of good for someone else.

Feuilly sat down by Bahorel as Grantaire moved behind a cop car. “Hey,” the redhead managed, not looking to his roommate. Exhaustion was clear on his face and Bahorel was reminded again that Feuilly had known Enjolras longer than any of them, save Combeferre and Courfeyrac.

“Hey,” the boxer offered back. He reached over and squeezed Feuilly’s knee. “I don’t know what to do for him.”

“I know you don’t. No one does. Combeferre’s beside himself with worry. Which, I suppose, that is him ignoring his own feelings too.”

“None of us should leave each other. We shouldn’t be alone. Not after this.”

“Ferre said he can talk to his landlord and see if he can open the upper floor for a few nights so we can all stay together,” Feuilly sighed. He pressed his fingers to Bahorel’s and shook his head. “It shouldn’t have happened to him.”

“It should have happened to me.” No one had said it, but Bahorel knew they must be thinking it. “I was the one who ran my mouth. I was the one who set him off. It shouldn’t have been him. I should have been the one who got shot.”

“`Rel, you can’t think like that. Anything could have set him off. He had a gun. Even if you hadn’t said anything, someone would have. I have no doubt that he targeted Enjolras. Enjolras is our voice. He was the one giving the arguments. He thinks he cut out our tongue.”

Bahorel shook his head. “When I tackled him…I was hitting him and I didn’t want to stop. I wanted him dead right then and there. I wanted…God, I don’t even know. I just…I was so mad and I was scaring myself. It felt surreal. It felt like…I felt like I was…hitting myself. That that was what I deserved.”

“Hey, look at me,” Feuilly demanded, grabbing Bahorel’s chin between his thumb and knuckle to turn his face. “This isn’t your fault. You weren’t in the wrong. Even the police pardoned his broken nose and said it was self-defense. No one wants to see him alive. But, if you think for one second, that anyone wants to see you dead or blames you, you have never been more wrong.”

Bahorel sagged forward, pressing his forehead to Feuilly’s shoulder and breathing out deeply. Feuilly ran his fingers through the shaggy hair in the center of Bahorel’s head that was usually up in a Mohawk. “He can’t be gone.”

Jehan was not easy to find. As usual, the smaller man had tucked himself away in a ball to observe. When Grantaire came to him, neither said anything. The artist sat down and Jehan reached a hand out to twine his fingers with Grantaire’s. They both knew it was a poor substitute, but exactly what they both needed right then. During the afternoon, Jehan’s long braid had come undone and he now wore it in a loose, wavy ponytail, devoid of flowers or pens. They didn’t say anything, just leaned against one another and communicated through gentle squeezes of their hands.

Jehan broke the silence five minutes into it. “How are you?” he asked quietly, higher voice nearly unrecognizable as it worked past the knot in the poet’s throat.

Grantaire took a deep breath and looked up from the grass he was picking at. “I feel like fucking shit,” he answered because he had never, not once, lied to Jehan. “I feel empty. I feel like someone else is moving my body because all I’m capable of doing is shaking. I feel like someone’s just ripped my heart out of my chest and shot it. I feel like…” He bit his lip and shook his head. “I feel like I don’t want to fight anymore. I just want to be with him.”

Jehan nodded, not willing to argue with the other. If he didn’t have the rest of the group, he thought he might feel much the same way. As it was, the hollowness was already picking at his chest, so he understood that. “I think Combeferre’s gotten the upper levels of his building open for all of us to sleep there together.” Grantaire simply nodded and went back to picking out the grass. “I’ll walk with you to your apartment and I’ll get your things if you want.”

“I don’t want to touch any of it.” A now familiar tightness wound through his chest and throat and tears sprang to his eyes. He didn’t even try to stop them this time. “We’d just cleaned and he was happy with how it looked so I’m not going to move anything.” He took a shaking breath. “Everything’s going to smell like him and I just can’t handle that right now. I can’t handle thinking about him holding me or how cold I am or anything else.”

“Okay, Tiger. Just breathe. I’m going to go find Bear and Fox and see if they can spare something for you.” Grantaire nodded and bit his lip, trying not to think of the fact that Jehan was never going to go ask Lion something or go see Lion or anything like that. The poet had different names for everyone. Grantaire was Tiger. Bahorel was Bear. Feuilly was Fox. Combeferre was Owl. Courfeyrac was Puppy. Marius was Baby Giraffe. Eponine was Raven. Enjolras had been Lion.

Grantaire didn’t even hear Eponine come up behind him. She kneeled down and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, cheek to the middle of his shoulder blades. “You’re strong enough to get through this,” she murmured softly.

After jumping and recognizing the arms around him, Grantaire held onto her forearms lightly. “I don’t think I am, `Ponine,” he muttered, licking the roof of his mouth and shaking his head. “I really don’t think I am. I don’t know how to walk away from this.”

“With all of us holding you,” she said simply, tightening her arms around him. He snorted and shook his head.

“I can’t ask that of you all. God, I should have pulled him down or jumped up, or something.”

“Would you want to subject him to the torture you’re feeling?” she asked, looking at him sideways.

“No, of course not,” Grantaire choked out, shaking his head hard. “I love him. I wouldn’t ever ask him to hurt.”

“Well, then, what would you taking the bullet have fixed?”

Grantaire shook his head. “If it had hit somewhere else…if he’d been somewhere else…he’d still be alive.”

“You don’t know that, R. You just don’t. Stop thinking of what could have been. It’ll ruin you.”

Grantaire jumped up, knocking Eponine’s arms off of him. “I need to run. I need to get away. I can’t stay here,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair roughly.

“Don’t do anything stupid, `Taire,” Eponine warned.

Grantaire ignored her and took off, running harder than he had in a long time. He didn’t know how far he got or where he was going, but he finally stopped, gasping for breath, outside of the Café Musain. He took a deep breath and stepped inside. Joly and Bousset were already at a table and Bousset stood up and hugged Grantaire tightly when he tried to step by to the bar.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered softly. For the millionth time that day, Grantaire broke down in sobs. Bousset lowered them back into his chair and held him as Grantaire just cried. Neither he nor Joly said anything and Joly simply continued drinking the water that was in front of him.

After three minutes, the doctor began to cry as well, resting his head on the edge of the table and Bousset wasn’t long after, crying into Grantaire’s hair. Thankfully no one was in the café and so no one was staring at them like they were insane. They didn’t say anything and eventually Grantaire untangled himself from his friend and left the café, not getting the drink he’d come in for. Once outside, he pulled out his phone and looked back while it rang against his ear. Joly had already taken his place in Bousset’s lap.

“I’m sure you’re aware that you’ve reached Enjolras. If it’s about the Amis, say so and I’ll get back to you when I can. If it’s personal, I’ll get back sooner. If it’s Grantaire, you know I prefer texting, you sentimental idiot. I hope you’re enjoying my voice. I love you.”

Grantaire quickly hung up and redialed. “I’m sure you’re aware that you’ve reached Enjolras. If it’s about the Amis, say so and I’ll get back to you when I can, probably in a text. If it’s personal, I’ll get back sooner. If it’s Grantaire, you know I prefer texting, you sentimental idiot. I hope you’re enjoying my voice. I love you.”

He played the message over and over again, sliding down the wall and beginning to cry harder every time he hit redial.

Finally, he called a different number. “I’m outside Musain. Please come get me. I don’t want to be alone.”


End file.
